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Influence – Light Touch Communications

These are quick and easy communications. They are sent within texting platforms, to help stakeholders, at all levels, know that you are still there and investing effort in them; not just asking (pressuring) them for something. This is an often overlooked aspect of leadership communication and effective with LOW effort!

Mitigate misunderstandings and improve mutual trust

Stakeholders can be prospect-customers, customers, your staff-members, peers, senior-staff and key supply-chain folks. Work is busy and some of them may be neglected by us, unless we use a CRM[1] with timed actions that we set-up. Light-touches are not heavy on your time, or theirs! The majority of timed actions, emails, calls and meetings are heavy on our management time and often are unnecessary. How do we know what is necessary to maintain great working relationships and where needed, meet our due diligence requirements for standards?

The answer to that, as with all and every single stakeholder, is to ask about their preferences in an upcoming conversation. These conversations may reduce the frequency of actual meetings and or the length of these meetings, saving us time to invest elsewhere. The conversations can help you to hone your messaging to meet their needs ensuring that there is openness and agreement; none of your contacts will feel neglected or over-pressured (by your executive action without agreeing with them what is best for effective co-working). Examples:

  • ‘When reaching out to you, what is your ideal channel for that and how frequently?’
  • ‘When I share information, am I getting the subjects/content about right or can I amend to suit you better?’

Organizing actions into distribution lists

You may end up with sixty or more of these ‘light touch contacts’ on your list of stakeholders. You can arrange them into lists, with timed actions for your reach-outs. The advantage of texts, Whatsapp included, is that you can produce quick distributions that fly-out individually to numerous people at the same moment. When you have time, you may revisit those messages and add another message, tailored for some of the contacts only:

  • ‘We’ve not connected directly for a while. Let me know if you do not want these messages or if a quick call would be useful?’

This same message may go out to just some of the contacts you just mailed out to. Quick copy and paste and the job of maintaining contact and stimulating response is done.

Another example is the sending out of quotations (below), but the action could be a timely up-date of useful information. In the case of these quotations, I send these out at three weekly intervals. Mine are mostly in text distribution lists that send out individual messages. Two quotation examples look like this:

One quotation will go out and some recipients will get a follow-up message too, inviting feedback. Here are three examples of my follow-up messages:

  • ‘Hi Mark, do you wish to continue getting these quotes; no problem either way!’
  • ‘Want to meet virtually in the coming weeks? I have spaces for you!’
  • ‘How are you doing?’

The feedback I receive back may result in another meeting, it may be a short message thanking and asking about my news, or it could be a request for information etcetera.

Conclusion

Light Touches keep us noticed. If we are brave enough to find out what our stakeholder preferences are, we can reduce the total time commitment that we spend on communication efforts. In some cases, an individual may need more time from you, but the investment will be fruitful, especially if reviewed to amend and meet their needs (while meeting your own needs or those that meet your business’ due diligence needs).


[1] Contact/Customer Relationship Management software.

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Perfectionism – A Better Approach

Perfectionism can be a strength but so often, executives fail to discriminate between those projects/outputs needing 100% perfection and those requiring less perfection. That can lead to time-stress, stressing of colleagues, poor decisions and poor work/life balance and relationships. A better approach is my ‘Triage System’ adapted to suit every individual. Here, Dr. Angus I. McLeod explains how in 6m 19s!

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Down Feeling – Fix Them!

Down Feelings are a human blight, world over. Dr. Angus I. McLeod explains why they can occur and why they may disrupt your effectiveness and wellbeing. He then explains how to deal with them to work and live more contentedly! 6m 23s only.

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Leadership & Motivation – Video Tips

Manage Self and Others Smarter


How to Engage with your staff, gain trust and, help them develop

The next video #2 (and nine more; almost 2 hours in total) can be found here on YouTube

Video #Time/ mm:ssSubjects covered
28:30Stop dissatisfaction in people by preventing over-managing and under-managing from now on
38:46Get the number of allocated projects right; engaging to get the best from others; acknowledgement; linguistic tricks!
48:21Key setting/agreeing boundaries; communicate early when issues arise & prevent chaos; carrots & sticks for double motivation!
512:21Trust Building; Leadership Traits; Gap-managing your own traits; The Trust Factor traits that are essential, or crisis results
67:54Reliability/Consistency vs flexibility explained; Action cycles and fire-fighting and how to be more strategic at work
712:23Leveraging the 1-2-1 with staff: motivating, checking your effectiveness, mindsets for difficult-behaviors, using ‘I’, ‘We’, & ‘You’
814:16Mindsets for different required solutions; four types of meetings fit for purpose and more efficient
910:52Leveraging Emotional Intelligence and speedy EI improvement without having to just grow old!
1011:57Beating conflicts: Second positioning and the 51% Rule
1113:51Managing stress (self & others); Persistent stress syndrome and how to break it; self-inquiry and self-inventory.
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Listening Leadership

Introduction

Exquisite Listening is at the heart of facilitating high performance in others. Listening is a key quality of leaders who mark themselves apart from managers who may dominate by directing.

When we listen well, we learn more about a person, about both their competences (practical and thinking styles) and about their motivations and de-motivations. We also learn how to influence them more effectively. Our influencing can then both inspire them to achieve at new levels but also to achieve with wellbeing, even when the demands we make, are over sustained periods.

A number of factors get in the way – awareness of these factors is a good place to start, so that strengths can be acknowledged and so gaps can be self-managed. The pathway to producing greater personal performance and satisfaction is then on track.

What gets in the way?

Continue reading Listening Leadership

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Wellbeing at Work

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Well-Being & Healthy Thinking

A healthy ‘mindset’ assists in well-being. This is not just about how happy we feel right now, but also, how empowered we are to achieve our aims.

But, what is a mindset? At least three things are important, these are: values, beliefs and our sense of identity. Continue reading Wellbeing at Work

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Leader Qualities: Supportive of Individuals

dog1Research shows there are 11 key Leader Qualities with one having a sub-set of 8 characteristics. Of the 19 Leader Qualities, 7 of them are ‘Trust Factors’. These are listed again below, together with a fuller description for Trust Factor: Supportive of People. Continue reading Leader Qualities: Supportive of Individuals

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Leader Qualities: Interested in Individuals

dog-interestedResearch shows there are 11 key Leader Qualities with one having a sub-set of 8 characteristics. Of the 19 Leader Qualities, 7 of them are ‘Trust Factors’. These are listed again below, together with a fuller description for Trust Factor: Interested in Colleagues. Continue reading Leader Qualities: Interested in Individuals